My Crazy Brother

A personal look at the West's suicidal tendencies

John and Ray Ring at Ray's October 1993 birthday party.
John, who struggled with mental illness most of his life, committed
suicide a year and a half later at age 47. COURTESY RING
FAMILY

Dotti Ray (far left), gunshot wound to the head, 1995
Shown here with children Tisha and TJ Thomson, Dotti Ray struggled
with depression and migraine headaches for 12 years before she
committed suicide in 1995. She had been an artist, and was selected
to do a portrait of President Ronald Reagan, which she delivered to
Reagan in the White House in 1987. "Eventually, she just crossed
the line. I didn't recognize the signs, didn't expect it," TJ says.
He was home in Idaho on leave from the Air Force when it happened;
she shot herself the day before he was to go back to work. PHOTO
COURTESY TJ THOMSON

"They're both doing pretty well, now ..." Twin brothers
Robert and Richard Encinas were normal, popular high school
students in Southern California until the summer after their
sophomore year. "One minute they're playing football, and the next
minute they're in a psychiatric hospital," says brother Tony
Pelais, who after that summer returned to the high school and
questions like, "What happened to your brothers? I hear they
freaked out." Ricky Encinas says, "My wife and I actually had no
idea what mental illness was. We hadn't even heard about
schizophrenia." After years of turmoil, "(the twins) finally
learned to take medication continuously, and everything kind of
leveled off." Robert now has his own apartment and Richard has a
job, is married and has a child. ENCINAS FAMILY, LEFT, FROM NOTHING
TO HIDE: MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE FAMILY. GIGI KAESER PHOTO.

Kevin Graham (right), hanged, 2003 Major General Mark
Graham, at Fort Carson, Colo., and his wife, Carol, highlight their
story in TV and newspaper interviews. One of their sons, Kevin,
suffered depression and hanged himself when he was 21. (Their other
son, Jeff, was killed in the Iraq War; they also have a daughter,
Melanie.) The Grahams work with the national Suicide Prevention
Action Network, trying to lessen the stigma of mental illness and
suicide. On their Web site, they say of Kevin, "Our son died on his
own battlefield. ... He fought against adversaries that were as
real to him as his casket is real to us. They were powerful
adversaries. ... At last these adversaries overwhelmed him and it
appeared he had lost the war. But did he? ... (He) has won our
admiration because even if he lost the war, we give him credit for
his bravery on the battlefield." COURTESY GRAHAM FAMILY,
WWW.GRAHAMMEMORIAL.COM

"I think that maybe someday there will be a cure for
mental illness ..." Trinidad Esparza sailed through high school as
student body president and a star athlete, and went on to college
and then a job as a tax auditor. But then he started feeling
paranoid and thought voices in the television were talking to him.
He stopped eating and even stopped drinking water. He had to resign
from his job, and eventually was hospitalized and diagnosed with
schizo-affective disorder. His mother, Bartola, says of her son's
illness, "We didn't hide it ... Some people won't tell anyone that
a family member has a mental illness. They keep it to themselves
and hibernate in the closet. I tell people to open up and let the
world know." Trini, as he's known, now volunteers and is waiting
for a cure for mental illness. "It's just a matter of time and
research." ESPARZA FAMILY, LEFT, FROM NOTHING TO HIDE: MENTAL
ILLNESS IN THE FAMILY. GIGI KAESER PHOTO.

Harry Reid, self-inflicted gunshot wound, 1972 Nevada Sen.
Harry Reid's father, also named Harry, a gold miner, committed
suicide in 1972. Reid revealed the suicide in a Senate hearing in
1997. "For many years it was just one of those unpleasant memories
that I didn't allow to surface and I've found that's very typical,"
Reid told the Associated Press in February 2008, when he introduced
the Stop Senior Suicide Act, which would allocate federal money to
help prevent suicide. Other Western congressmen also have shared
their stories: Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith's son, Garrett, suffered
depression and committed suicide in 2003. Smith is also a champion
for better funding for mental health care. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden
had a schizophrenic brother who died. New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici
has a schizophrenic daughter. Domenici is also a champion on the
issue. A SQUARE FROM A SPAN USA LIFEKEEPER MEMORY QUILT, (COURTESY
SPAN USA)

"We want to do the same things you do." Juan Ineguez says
the media has a lot to do with creating the stigma around mental
illness. When mentally ill John Hinckley shot President Reagan,
"The media made it sound like everybody with a mental illness was
going to go out there and shoot people ... (it) can't conceive that
anyone who has a mental illness can have a healthy relationship or
even a normal conversation with someone else." NOTHING TO HIDE/GIGI
KAESER

Because some of the time, he wasn't crazy. Or he didn't act crazy. In those good spells, he could be the together older brother, a guy who was good with tools, had a precise pool shot and a talent for massaging brown clay into sculptures of beautiful women. He could take apart the engine of a car or motorcycle, lay out the pieces in neatly labeled envelopes, fix what was broken and put it all back together so it worked. He could talk physics and chemistry and make a good spaghetti. He could see into people and make perceptive remarks.

Most of the time, though, he could barely function. He would hang from a cigarette as if it alone sustained him, and pace back and forth because he couldn't be still and couldn't figure out where to go. He would stare at people and things too long and not answer when spoken to.

In his worst times, he acted completely crazy. Hallucinating, he lined his walls with crinkled aluminum foil to try to block out the voices only he could hear. His movements grew stiff and jerky. His stare seethed with anger.

Or even worse, he would soar on optimism, exuberantly telling me he'd finally cured himself and would be all right from now on - that look lighting his eyes.

I would look at him acting so crazy, and sometimes I thought: Come on, John, knock it off.

You're probably also involved in craziness somehow. The issue cascades through communities and families. Most of us don't talk about it much, because it's too personal. Too burdened with despair and desperate hopes, guilt, blame, feeling sorry for others and ourselves. We're not even supposed to use the word "crazy." It's politically incorrect, but it's the most succinct description I know.

This story needs to be aired because it has meanings beyond vicious fate and one family struggling to cope. It's about people needing help in general, and how that isn't much in fashion these days. And it illuminates dark aspects of Western culture that we prefer to keep hidden.

One out of every six people in this country will suffer a diagnosable episode of mental illness this year. One out of every 17 is seriously mentally ill, a category of disasters that includes bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group founded in 1979, gives the United States the grade of "D" for our systems of mental-health awareness and care - nearly complete failure. Nationwide, we spend more than $100 billion per year on it. The total keeps rising, and the number of people being treated keeps rising. The wider impacts on society - the annual costs of untreated mental illness - total another $100 billion.

The only feel-good rush on this issue came during the 1950s to the 1970s, when nationwide reforms freed many people from long-term warehousing in mental hospitals. Now we have one-tenth the number of hospitalized crazies we had back then. But we traded one set of failures for another - we have more mentally ill people in jails and prisons than in hospitals. And in our communities and on the streets, the billions of dollars have fallen short, and mostly we've chosen to look away from the sick rather than set up adequate treatment and support.

I'm focusing on the deficiencies in our systems of public care, for those who can't afford private psychiatrists and thus fall onto the ragged safety nets. Even for the wealthy, though, there are no easy answers, if there are any answers at all.

For my brother, it worked like this: John was born in 1947 in Tucson, Ariz., where our parents had moved for the healthy, dry air. Then they moved to California, where I was born in an ambulance, and then Indiana, then Illinois, where my younger brother, Mike, was born. Our father, Ray Sr., was an entrepreneur who chased opportunity while suffering physical illnesses and subtle symptoms of craziness, including unpredictable moods and an inability to stay in one place. As Ray Sr. failed in business, he aimed his demand for perfection and his angry frustration at his first seed - John. In his eyes, John could never do anything right.

Like many crazy people, John probably had his illness encoded into his genes, and childhood stress activated it. From the time he was an infant he rarely smiled. By fourth grade, he had trouble concentrating. He was hearing his own thoughts. Our mother, Kate, took him to his first psychiatrist. More clouds emerged. When John was 13, Ray Sr. went into the hospital for an operation for symptoms that turned out to be cancer, and John punished himself: He took a baseball bat into his bedroom, locked the door and began smashing his toys. Kate and I stood outside the door listening to the breakage, calling to him, getting no response. Kate didn't know what to do and phoned an Episcopal priest, who came in his black outfit and called through the door, "John, do you know who this is?" John's voice came through the door, "Santa Claus?" and he kept on with the bat. I remember grinning at his crazy humor. Smiling was my nature, and I did it so much that Kate thought something might be wrong with me.

Our father finally killed himself with cigarettes and lung cancer when John was 15, I was 13 and my younger brother was 10. Kate finished raising us, taking a series of jobs, including elementary school teacher, editor of educational materials, real estate agent, and finally an adjunct English teacher at a community college. All of this has been toughest on her.

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